Rating: 
Summary: Great intro to Halberstam's sports work
Review: 'The Teammates' is great way to introduce yourself to the sportswriting efforts of one of America's preeminent journalists, David Halberstam. Clocking in at exactly 200 loosely-spaced pages, you can devour it three or fewer dedicated seatings.Then, if you like this effort, you can tackle some of his larger baseball-oriented works, "October 1964" or "Summer of '49." Halberstam takes you inside the game like no one else, with his hallmark 20-page in-depth profiles of his books' protagonists. For fans of baseball history, these are mandatory readings. "The Teammates" ought to be required reading, certainly for any Red Sox fan, and perhaps for baseball fans in general. It chronicles the lives of four Red Sox teammates and their lifelong dedication to each other: - Dominic DiMaggio...growing up in Boston, my Dad always told me DiMaggio was better than his brother. There was even a jingle about the debate: "Who is better than his brother Joe? Do-mi-nic DiMaggio." In fact, Halberstam and the teammates wonder aloud why the Veterans Committee never voted Dom into the Hall of Fame. His defensive wizardy covered for Williams' weaknesses in left field. - Johnny Pesky...I grew up with Pesky as a Red Sox announcer; and, according to a legend handed down to me by my Dad (this happened all over New England) the man that "held the ball" while Enos Slaughter steamed around the bases in Game 7 of the 1946 World Series. Halberstam - in the book's one piece of investigative journalism - debunks this tale. there was a breakdown on the play, but it occurred elsewhere. [Read the book for the details!] - Bobby Doerr...this guy is a Saint in Boston, revered by all. As Ted Williams' best friend, he bore the brunt of Teddy's temper throughout the years, but remained a steadfast friend. Regarded by many as the finest second-baseman ever to play the game. - Theodore Samuel Williams...no words I write here can do justice to the greatness of the man. It took Halberstam 200 pages to try to draw a bead on him and you get the feeling he's only scratched the surface. The other players admit that they essentially were sucked in by his gravitaional pull throughout their lives. As Pesky aptly notes: "It was like there was a star on top of his head, pulling everyone toward him like a beacon." On top of all that, there's a great drop-in story about Tip O'Neill and Williams eating lunch at the Ritz Carlton. It's not repeatable here and I can't do it justice anyway. Yet another reason to buy the book today.
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Summary: An Intriguing But Undeniably Sad Tale
Review: Many years ago, before baseball's free agency transformed rooting for teams into rooting for individuals, fans could count on having a corps of familiar faces around for years. On the athletes' side, although conventional wisdom warned against it, strong friendships developed (the conventional wisdom warned that today's pal could be tomorrow's enemy). Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam chronicles more than a half-century of such friendships between four star ballplayers in THE TEAMMATES. Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio shared their youth and glory as members of the Boston Red Sox. They "grew up" together, evolving from the relative immaturity inherent in a lifestyle that allows you to play games for a living, to the pangs of old age that sets in when your professional life ends before you're out of your thirties. They were all products of the West Coast, playing with and against each other in the minor leagues before reuniting on the East Coast with the Red Sox. As members of the World War II generation, they all lost time from their careers in the service of their country. Williams, a decorated fighter pilot in the War, was called upon again to serve in the Korean conflict, a fate that he accepted as a matter of duty, although no one could tell him he had to like it. In sports, friendships often end when players go their separate ways, through trades to other teams or retirement. Such was not the case with this quartet. Halberstam, whose previous books on baseball include SUMMER OF '49 (about the Yankees-Red Sox battle for the pennant) and OCTOBER 1964 (regarding the final year of the Yanks' pre-Steinbrenner dynasty), recreates the feeling of the game in a long-forgotten era, when conditions and lack of today's distractions enabled closer ties between players. Although the career of each man is given adequate homage in this slim volume, THE TEAMMATES, for the most part, revolves around Williams. He was a grand pal, but that didn't keep him from being a pain at times. Halberstam depicts a fishing trip Doerr made with Williams in which nothing went right. Ted had a well-earned reputation as a perfectionist. In addition to his Hall of Fame career, he was an expert fisherman and had little patience for those who didn't live up to his demanding expectations, no matter how good a friend he was dealing with. But rather than being angry, Doerr, perhaps his closest buddy of the group, felt he had let Williams down with his unlucky day in the boat. THE TEAMMATES is an undeniably sad tale. It opens with Pesky, DiMaggio and a third party getting ready to make a cross-country drive to see a dying Williams. Doerr, whose wife was in poor health, was unable to join his old friends. "It had come down to this one, final visit," writes Halberstam in the book's final chapter. "They had once felt immortal, so immune to the vagaries of age." But fate had not been kind to Williams in recent years. Once the picture of robust middle-age health, he was now confined to a wheelchair, having suffered from stroke and heart disease, his 6'3" frame withered to 130 pounds. After driving for three days (in the wake of September 11, none of the men felt comfortable enough to fly), Pesky and DiMaggio --- who might have been an even better fielder than his brother Joe --- arrived in Florida and were shocked and saddened by Williams's condition. They spent another three days visiting, reminiscing about the wonderful times they had together and discussing the problems with the current game. After their farewells, DiMaggio called every day to keep Williams abreast of the Red Sox's doings. Sometimes the man who had been known as the Splendid Splinter would fall asleep in the middle of their conversation. One day, he never woke up. Williams's life was complex. On the one hand, he had the fame and fortune confirmed upon those with superior talent. On the other, and as is so often the case, his personal life was less than ideal, both as the product of an unhappy home life as a youth and through his failed marriages and difficulties with his own children. But through it all, through good times and bad, he could always count on THE TEAMMATES. --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
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Summary: It is are rehash in a different cover
Review: Halberstam's Summer of '49 already told much of this and at less than 200 pages you can see he's mailing this one in using research he already did. I liked the stuff about the 80 y/o's driving down to see Ted but the rest is plainly found elsewhere and rewritten stuff from his other book. Personally, I don't get Halberstam at all. I find him just a bit too much. For writings about baseball's distant past I much prefer Creamer or Angell (even he is also good on up-to-date stuff) or Kahn.
Rating:
Summary: A trip to Florida
Review: The cast of players in this book are from my time(I am 75)and I lived baseball, in the 40's thru 60's and enjoy baseball stories, but this book is weak. The author tends to be redundant and has little new information to impart..
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Summary: Short, nostalgic look at the best age of baseball
Review: Although too short (it left me wanting to read much more), The Teammates proved to be an absultely enjoyable book. Centered around the friendship between for members of the 1940s Red Sox (Dom Dimaggio, Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Booby Doerr) as it takes them from their minor league days to Ted's passing, this was an absolute delight. At 220+ pages, this was written very well, showing a clear love of the game and the era that produced major leaguers with loyalty to their team, town, and each other. It was filled with examples of the men's backgrounds, their ballplaying days and good and bad times off the field. The book itself centers around the long drive down the East Coast for two of the players and a friend to Florida, where Ted is close to the end. Baseball has an ability at times to rear up and remind us how much of a pleasure it is to be aorund a game that is wholesomely American, and the joy of our youth. David Halberstam's book also does that much better then many other baseball writers I have read, and for that I give this a rare 5 stars.
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Summary: Over the Green Monster...A Home Run!
Review: Just in time for the great Red Sox season of '03, the one in which they definitely will win the World Series, comes this rich portrait of four former Sox teammates: Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and the immortal Ted Williams. David Halberstrom's book could almost be an addendum to Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation, this chronicle of four Depression-era scrappers from California sandlots and their lives both between the lines and, just as interesting, outside them. In just under 200 pages, we travel with DiMaggio, Pesky, and friend Dick Flavin from Massachusetts to Florida to pay one last visit to their beloved teammate before his death. We learn about the remarkably similar paths each player took to the big league Red Sox, and what a different world baseball was before free agency. We get a peek at the closeness between these men - a bond stronger than family ties. It's remarkable, for instance, to learn that Joe DiMaggio, the great icon who hit in 56 straight games, led the Yankees through all those glory years, and married Marilyn Monroe, actually felt that his brother Dominic had bettered him in life. Dominic a successful, always hardworking businessman, retired wealthy after running a manufacturing company and had a tighter relationship with Ted Williams than with Joe. He was there for Ted, visiting and calling every day right up to Ted's death. It's remarkable that each of Ted's teammates Doerr, Pesky and DiMaggio seemed to have had more successful lives outside baseball than Ted ever could. Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio...American legends, yet they never had much success with families or work...precisely what Ted's teammates were great at. Doerr, Pesky and DiMaggio all had long-lasting marriages, nobly battled illnesses and infirmities of old age with great dignity, and led happy, productive lives. We learn that Ted, never really got past a very bad childhood, and perhaps, never grew up at all. He simply wanted to be the best hitter that ever was. And he was. There are many good baseball stories involving players of all generations: Ty Cobb sends a letter of hitting instruction to Ted Williams; Willie Mays was almost a centerfielder for the Sox; Johnny Pesky wasn't really the goat of the '46 World Series; Bobby Doerr's wife Monica was oblivious to the devastating playoff loss of the '48 Sox to the Yanks...she welcomed an earlier vacation to the Catskills. Even the stories told in the car headed south are vintage dugout banter: While Pesky snoozes in the back, DiMaggio and Flavin argue about how to shave a mile or two off a cross-country car trip by shifting lanes through the turns. Dan Shaughnessey, the great Boston Globe sports scribe who covers the Sox, wrote today in his column that this book is required reading for members of Red Sox nation. I echo that and suggest that anyone with a love of the game and its history will cherish this keepsake of an earlier time in baseball history.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring and Typical
Review: Halberstam is maybe the most overrated writer (especially on baseball) of the past 20 years. Don't waste your time reading a re-write of 'summer of '49'--.
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Summary: Warm Remembrances Of Four Red Sox Forever Teammates
Review: This is a very warm and refreshing book about four ball players from the greatest period in Red Sox history, Ted Williams, Bobby Doer, Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky. This book Is not only about the undying friendship of four ball players, two of which are in the hall of fame and the other two should be, but also about baseball when teammates stayed on the same team virtually for their entire career. They not only shared the diamond but a cab after a game and enjoyed each other's company even after the season. Pesky and DiMaggio with friend Flavin drive down to visit a dying Williams for there last meeting. During their trip, they relive their careers with the Red Sox, but also the Red Sox franchise at its peak. The author also serves this as an opportunity to provide a biography of each player. The perfectionist and gifted Williams, the scrappy and undying baseball man Pesky, the nice guy and steady star player Doer and the fascinating and extremely intelligent DiMaggio who was just as successful after he left baseball as he was when he played. Great breakdown of what happened in that fatal World Series game in 1946 that was set up actually by DiMaggio's clutch hit and then pulled hamstring. Interesting that Williams was such a perfectionist not only in baseball and fishing but anything in life such as cutting a grapefruit. Very heart-warming story that flows so easy you can read the book in a long lazy afternoon.
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Summary: The "Same Olds"
Review: I call Halberstam, Roger Angell, Roger Kahn et al, the 'same olds'--they write the same books over and over--all in their very 'intelligent, high brow, upper eastside of new york, 'style.' BORING, except to those at the ultra-in-the-know, New York Times, where they can never do wrong. Because they're smart--like Al Gore was 'smart'. If you're 'smart', the Times thinks you're better, more informed. But, of course this is not true and that's why we have more boring (I use that word specifically) books by these 'smart' baseball 'minds'. This book says nothing new, has no great feeling...it's halberstam though and it must be good--right? he's so smart! How can you go wrong if the New York Times likes it?
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Summary: "The Red Sox killed my father. Now they¿re coming after me."
Review: The 1946 World Series match-up between Boston and the St. Louis Cardinals went to seven games before Boston finally lost the championship, and Halberstam makes this seventh game come alive in all its frustrating excitement. The book is unique, however, not because of its rehash of old ball games, but because it brings back an era, more than a half-century ago, when close and supportive friendships developed between players who spent their whole careers on the same team. Telling the story of the sixty-year friendship of baseball greats Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky of the Boston Red Sox, Halberstam shows the kind of friendship which was possible in an era in which players were people, not commodities. Warm and nostalgic, the book opens in October, 2001, as Dom DiMaggio, accompanied by Boston writer Dick Flavin and Johnny Pesky, makes a melancholy car trip from Boston to Florida to pay a last visit to Ted Williams, who is dying. As the men drive from Boston to Florida, they reminisce about their playing days more than fifty years in the past, recalling anecdotes about their friendship and talking about their lives, post-baseball. Halberstam uses these memories as the framework of this book, describing the men from their teenage years. All were from the West Coast, all were about the same age, all arrived in Boston to begin their careers within the same two-year period, and all shared similar values. Ted Williams, "the undisputed champion of contentiousness," was the most dominant of the group. Bobby Doerr was Williams's closest friend and roommate, "a kind of ambassador from Ted to the rest of the world," Doerr himself being "very simply among the nicest and most balanced men." Bespectacled Dom DiMaggio, the brother of Vince and Joe, was the consummate worker, a smart player who had been "forced to study everything carefully when he was young in order to maximize his chances and athletic abilities." Johnny Pesky, combative and small, was also "kind, caring, almost innocent." Stories and anecdotes, sometimes told by the players themselves, make the men individually come alive and show the depth and value of their friendship. The four characters remain engaging even when, in the case of Williams, they may be frustratingly disagreeable. There's a bittersweet reality when Halberstam brings the lives of Williams, Doerr, DiMaggio, and Pesky, all now in their eighties, up to the present--these icons are, of course, as human as the rest of us, subject to the same physical deterioration and illnesses. In Halberstam's sensitive rendering of their abiding relationship, however, we see them as men who have always recognized and preserved the most important of human values, and in that respect they continue to serve as heroes and exemplars to baseball fans throughout the country. Mary Whipple
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